Home Depot Co-Founder: Obama Re-Election Will Cause "Despair"

As the 2012 U.S. presidential election draws near, the rhetoric is ramping up — and politicians aren’t the only ones dishing hyperbolic rhetoric.

On Friday, in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, billionaire Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus said that a second term for President Obama would bring “despair.” Marcus, whose net worth we estimated at $2.3 billion in March, has a long history of incendiary political statements — including calling Occupy Wall Street protesters “imbeciles.”

Here’s the clip and transcript from Fox News:

Hannity: If Barack Obama is re-elected, what do you see in your crystal ball?

Marcus: Despair. I speak to business people all the time, and I’m not talking about [CEO Jeff] Immelt from GE. He’s in a different world, he’s making a lot of money overseas. I’m talking about people who make their livelihood here, small business people that don’t have lobbyist in Washington. They are disheartened, they are uncertain about the future.

They are certain about one thing: that if he’s elected, that taxes will go up. They know that the cost of health insurance is going to go up, if Obamacare stays, they’re going to get killed with Obamacare. They know that the regulations are going to be there. And NLRB — there isn’t a firm out there that’s not going to be unionized. And if every firm is unionized, the free market is finished in the United States. We’re going to end up like Spain and Greece, and the U.K. and Germany and everybody else.

“Despair” may be quite the strong pronouncement, but Marcus has been known for his harsh criticisms of Obama and Democrats in recent years. While not a social conservative (he has voiced support for abortion, gun control, and stem cell research in the past), the Home Depot co-founder and former CEO is outspoken on economic issues. He helped launch the Jobs Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit of entrepreneurs with the mission to “defend and preserve the system of free enterprise in the United States.”

Back in 2008, Marcus reacted strongly to “Card Check” legislation that would have made it easier for workers to form a union. He said, ”This is the demise of a civilization. This is how a civilization disappears. I’m sitting here as an elder statesman, and I’m watching this happen, and I don’t believe it.”

In 2010, Marcus told CNBC that the treasury secretary needed to be put through a reality show in which he learned how difficult it is to deal with regulations at every level of government. The analogy was less than wholesome:

“My solution is that you take a guy like Timothy Geithner and put him in a new reality show. It’s called ‘Timothy Geithner Does Small Business’, something like [the porn movie] ‘Debbie Does Dallas’, and it ends up the same way,” said Marcus. ”Basically, what they’re doing to small business is very similar in this case [to what ‘Debbie’ did to Dallas.]”

In September 2011, he called the Obama administration “amateurs surrounded by amateurs.”

And in December of last year, Marcus said that successful business people who don’t defend themselves against Occupy Wall Street “deserve what they’re going to get.” He also noted that he wasn’t worried about becoming a target of those protesters. “Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said at the time.

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